Black Migrants Exhibition

Black Migrants is an exhibition of African-American farm worker photos I took in the 1960s curated by Michele Ellis Pracy at the Fresno Art Museum. The exhibition is now available for showing new venues.

While covering farm workers’ life, work, and union organizing in the 1960s I discovered a number of African-American settlements in California’s San Joaquin Valley. These towns are a little known part of history, the results of the rural-to-rural stream of the Great Migration out of the Jim Crow south. more

Teviston mother and children pause from doing laundry on front porch

October 1964

Ernest Lowe checks out a Bolex in a cotton field near Cororan. November 18, 1961. photo by Phillip Greene.

Ernest Lowe in a Mexican restaurant in Dos Palos. photo by Joel Pickford March 2015

The elder who put Tonto on his living room wall. Teviston, November 1964

They named their football field The Dust Bowl. Some went on to play college and pro football. Teviston, November 1964

Woman crossing one of the few paved roads in Teviston. November 20, 1961

Charles Beavers hauls water three miles from Pixley for the Beavers and other families. They had no water they could drink at home. Teviston, October 1964

Fixing the car for work next Spring. Teviston, November, 1964

William McKinley "Buck" Ashmore's back yard car repair shop

William McKinley “Buck” Ashmore repairs cars after a life time of picking cotton. Teviston October 1964

A boy harvests onions in 100+ weather. a field along Hwy 33 on west side of Fresno County, July 11, 1961

Pausing in a cotton field for a potrait near Pixley. November 11, 1961

It takes real skill to pick cotton fibers from the boll quick enough to fill hundred pound sacks we drag along behind

A Black woman puts her 100 pound sack on the scales, which were often rigged. Pickers would compensate by adding rocks to their load.

Woman climbing down ladder after dumping her bag full of cotton. Cotton field near Pixley, November 11, 1961

See, the machines are pickin' most of the cotton. There's just little patches the machine can't get to that the people get to pick." November 18, 1961. Near Corcoran in Kings County

Net income from the San Joaquin Valley's cotton industry was the highest on record in 1964. October 1964 near Corcoran

A day's wages for chopping sugar beets, East Mendota March 21,1961

Walking home from cotton field near Pixley. November 11, 1961

Fresno Art Museum Director Michelle Ellis Pracy curated the exhibition.Joel Pickford made the extraordinary prints.Mark Arax and Michael Eissinger provided valuable background information on the history of the African-American settlements.California Humanities Community Stories Program, Fresno Art Museum and its donors, and West of West Center for Narrative History of the Central Valley have provided funding.